I always did have a kind of candle shining for Peter Green. “I’m sitting there in the studio and I get a little lump in my throat – especially when you turn around and the writer’s sitting right there.” So they asked that interviews be done with each member separately.
“It was clumsy sometimes,” said John McVie. As the songs took shape, the album began to sound like True Confessions: the band’s three writers – Christine McVie, Nicks and Buckingham – were all writing about their crumbled relationships.Īs they added finishing touches to an album more intimate than they had ever anticipated, the band firmly closed their studio doors. A fully booked fall tour was canceled, and there, while films like Squirm and Dick City played next door, Fleetwood Mac started the mixing process. They were almost resigned to starting all over when one of their crew found a cramped dubbing room in the porno district of Hollywood Boulevard, a studio that perfectly accommodated what they had recorded. They returned to Los Angeles, but the tapes from their nine weeks in the Sausalito studio – many of them mangled by a “recording machine” that earned the nickname “Jaws” – sounded strange wherever they played them. let’s be mature about this, sort it out.’ Somehow we waded through it.” “Somehow Mick was there, the figurehead: ‘We must carry on. “Everybody was pretty weirded out,” Christine McVie explained. The father of two children, he and his wife Jenny were in the midst of divorce proceedings.ĥ00 Greatest Albums of All Time: Fleetwood Mac, Rumours And Mick Fleetwood certainly wasn’t talking to anybody. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were about to do likewise. Christine and John McVie, married for almost eight years, had recently split up and weren’t speaking to each other. Traveling to the Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, just north of San Francisco, Fleetwood Mac had walked straight into an emotional holocaust. Work on the album began in February ’76, immediately after the group had introduced their new lineup on a marathon six-month cross-country tour. Only John McVie, perhaps in the grand tradition of bassists, remains impassive and faultlessly proficient.īut one would soon learn that their minds were elsewhere – namely, in the tiny studio across town from the Amphitheater, where they were still struggling to finish their very late followup LP, a trouble-child called Rumours. What with Buckingham prowling around the stage, dropping feisty lead runs into all the right places, and singer Nicks playing the whirling dervish Welsh witch Rhiannon, the group’s dignified reserve was clearly a thing of the past.Įven drummer Mick Fleetwood finally ventured out from behind his drum kit to play the African talking drum on “World Turning.” And Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac’s brandy-voiced keyboardist of six years, recently overcame a phobia against talking with the audience. New energy was being supplied by Stevie Nicks and the other most recent addition, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. There, in front of an adoring crowd that included Elton John and two princesses of Iran, Fleetwood Mac looked like they were feeling good. There are, of course, reasons for Warners’ optimism: Fleetwood Mac produced three hit singles (“Over My Head” and “Say You Love Me” by McVie “Rhiannon” by Nicks), sold 4 million units, has danced around the top half of the album charts for over 80 weeks and is Warner’s all-time best seller.Īnd adding to everyone’s enthusiasm were shows like the one at L. The group’s latest album is being shipped out in greater quantities than any other record in the history of Warner Bros. Fleetwood Mac’s music has evolved into a sophisticated pop and rock sound that’s just right for the Seventies, thanks primarily to two women, old-timer Christine McVie and newcomer Stevie Nicks.